Finally, a Chance to Say...Whatever They Want

Hofstra University is not in a swing state. It is in thoroughly blue New York, more specifically in Hempstead, Long Island, as indistinct a place as any on this crowded spit of run-together towns and tidy front lawns. Whatever happens on November 6, it will not hinge on what the voters of Hempstead think or do. But for today—apparently owing to the fact that the university ponied up several million dollars to host the debate—the presidential campaign has momentarily decamped here, in all of its chaotic glory. Tents and steel barriers have been erected everywhere, and dotting the curving walkways between classroom buildings are the brightly lit stages of the TV network emplacements. The backdrop, of course, is the students themselves. And though their votes may not matter as much as their peers' in Iowa or Colorado, they have come out in force to wave signs, shout for their guy, and generally be ridiculous.

"You can just say there were three idiots sitting out there with a 'Nacho Cheese' sign," says Everett Wood, a sophomore in a plaid shirt and trucker hat. He and two classmates are, indeed, holding a cardboard sign, hand-lettered in spindly Sharpie, that says "Nacho Cheese." Around them, students are jumping up and down with standard-issue Romney and Obama signs and bright, painted banners demanding action on particular causes. But not these guys. Fully three of them, sitting on a low brick wall, and just one little Nacho Cheese sign. It would appear to be the latest, and not necessarily greatest, incarnation of a very old and not very politically correct children's joke. I ask them if this is an act of commentary, or whether there is an actual issue here that I'm missing.

"It's a little bit of both," says Ryan Hutchins, his hoodie zipped up tight. "I am passionate about our cheese. And not cho cheese." So there we are.

Nearby, though, a junior named Hannah Cohen has a more earnest take. "I finally feel like people care," she says, explaining that she means both that her fellow students are engaging in the election at last, and that the nation, for once, cares what she has to stay. She's been walking around today with a dollar bill tied across her mouth. A dance and film production major, she is protesting the outsize influence of lobbyists and magadonors on priorities like arts funding.

"It's great," Cohen says. "Any other day, if I were to wear a dollar bill around campus, no one would care. Today, I've done seven, eight, nine interviews."

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